From Individual Word Recognition to Word List and Text Reading Fluency

Abstract

This study aimed to examine (a) the developing interrelations between the efficiency of reading individually presented words (i.e., isolated word recognition speed) and the efficiency of reading multiword sequences (i.e., word list and text reading fluency), (b) whether serial digit naming, indexing the ability to process multi-item sequences, accounts for variance in word list and text reading fluency beyond isolated word recognition speed, and (c) if these patterns of relations/effects differ between two alphabetic languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek). In total, 710 Greek-and Englishspeaking children from Grades 1, 3, and 5 completed a serial digit naming task and a set of reading tasks, including unconnected words presented individually, unconnected words presented in lists, and sentences forming a meaningful passage. Our results showed that the relation between isolated word recognition speed and both word list and text reading fluency gradually decreased across grades, irrespective of contextual processing requirements. Moreover, serial digit naming uniquely predicted both word-list and text reading fluency in Grades 3 and 5, beyond isolated word recognition speed. The same pattern of results was observed across languages. These findings challenge the notion that individual word recognition and reading fluency differ only in text-level processing requirements. Instead, an additional component of processing multi-item sequences appears to emerge by Grade 3, after a basic level of both accuracy and speed in word recognition has been achieved, offering a potential mechanism underlying the transition from dealing with words one at a time to efficient processing of word sequences.

Examining the growth trajectories and cognitive predictors of reading in a consistent orthography: Evidence from a 10-year longitudinal study

“…Our results show that there is something unique to RAN and oral reading fluency that is not shared with orthographic knowledge (and is also independent of articulation because we controlled here for articulation rate). We argue that this is likely due to the serial format of RAN and reading fluency measures that allows parallel processing of multiple stimuli when they appear in sequence (see Altani et al, 2020;Protopapas et al, 2018, for a similar argument).…”

“…This implies that there are elements in these skills that are still developing even in upper elementary grades. A possible candidate is the ability to simultaneously process multiple stimuli in parallel (Altani et al, 2020;Protopapas et al, 2018). In early grades, this may involve intra-word processing, while in later grades inter-word processing.…”

“…Still, they differ in the demand for higher-level supralexical processing skills, such as syntactic parsing and semantic integration, which are only involved in text-reading fluency (Jenkins et al, 2003;Rasinski et al, 2012). Assuming children read lists of words in a way similar to reading simple texts (Altani et al, 2020), the growth trajectories of text-reading fluency should be similar to that of word-reading fluency. Finally, we have included a variety of known predictors of reading development that were assessed twice: in Grade 1, to predict the growth patterns from Grade 1 to Grade 4 and, in Grade 4, to predict the growth patterns from Grade 4 to Grade 10.…”

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

“…High reading proficiency is not only about comprehending the text being read but also doing it fluently. Just like reading comprehension, reading fluency is a multifaceted ability, informed by skills in decoding, word recognition, morphological and syntactic segmentation, reading experience, and domain-general cognitive skills (e.g., Altani et al, 2020;Hudson et al, 2008;Kendeou et al, 2012;Kuhn et al, 2010). Most research on L2 reading fluency, especially when text reading is concerned, has been conducted with the use of eye-tracking.…”